Tag Archives: xaoc

Superbooth was busy, as always. Here are some subjective impressions. Disclaimer: This is a list based on our personal opinion. As always, no one has the ultimate knowledge when it comes to art, it only matters to us what made us really happy: each to their own.

Doepfer is carrying on what they had always been good at – it might be a bit slower, though they are pushing out interfaces and modules which offer almost the same functionality for an affordable price. Let it be a keyboard or quad VCO, they are and will be here to stay.

Soundwise though, two highlights can be mentioned – one would be the new/old Nanozwerg Pro from MFB reborn in eurorack format for a ridiculously good price. Another one is the Fold Processor from Tiptop. We could speculate that after Random Source stole the show with their Serge reincarnations, Tiptop decided to put their Serge module concepts aside and develop their own, with the best controls with intuitive feel featuring the sound that are completely taking a modulation concept to the next level. We have no complaints about the Digitakt from Elektron either. Check
out this audio demo to see if you agree with us.

Interface-wise, let’s begin with the Soundmachines – Arches – one of our customers told us a few years ago that how mad it would be to have a full keyboard full of LS-1 Lightstrips… fast forward to 2017 and he is not alone with his idea any more. The Arches is to be out in September.

Erica Synths also showed us how anti-futurism can be beaten by retro-futurism. A versatile drum sequencer with computer keyboards – its price is yet to be confirmed.

Other fun ideas worth mentioning – click on the links for the videos:

High-end audio solutions are not hard to find in eurorack any more – ARREL Audio modules speak for themselves.

Expert Sleepers shared some details with us about the Disting MK4 firmware plus introduced us a new module.

Eloquencer – a really thought-out sequencer in the pathway of the Malekko Varigate…

Each year has two crucial moments. One is of course the Winter NAMM show, but nobody would forget spring’s Superbooth either. As every year, Analogue Zone will be live and direct from Berlin.

We collected the expected highlights of this year’s Superbooth, but obviously, there will be more to come. This is just an appetizer, you may want to come back for daily updates to Analogue Zone’s Youtube channel!

XAOC Devices is teasing us with new modules: an upgrade with their Tirana microsequencer plus Warna utility module, a dual version of their Sewastopol, a bit modifier, a logic-waveshaper-comparator-sampl-and-hold combo and their Praga stereo mixer may finally see the light of the day too.

On the 4th of December a new tradition might be established. Two Hungarian modular synth composers & performers will be accompanying a classic science-fiction novel for 6.5 hours live.

The idea for the project StanisłAV that came from composers Bálint Baráth and András Hargitai (Banyek) is that just like in the case of silent movies, some background music, timbres and atmospheres would be provided while the novel (Staniław Lem‘s classic, the Invincible which tells the story of one high-tech space ship landing on a planet with a rescue team trying to understand what had happened to its identical brother and its crew) is projected onto a screen behind the instruments. However, all the sounds that are described in the novel will also be performed live. The textures of the visuals (created by Hungarian media artist David Mórász aka micro.D) will also be controlled real-time by the same modulation sources that control the audio.

An incomplete list of euro gear that will play a key role in the performance:

Even though a growing number of modular synth users are tend to go into more complex territorries with amplitude and frequency modulation (AM and FM), it might be puzzling to understand why “phase” and “thru-zero” are often praised – the other electronic parameters have been really caught up recently with the release of the Strong Zero Core for the Furthrrrr Generator by Endorphin.es or the Bateleur by Birdkids, a true analog thru-zero oscillator. So I thought to come up with some musical contexts and applications of waveforms in different phase and phase modulation, so that they become as “common” as AM and FM for you. I hope it will help you to go far within new territorries in your system: these new territories where I had (accidentally) my own eurorack system started.

Phase and timing relationships

My first ever LFO was luckily – the A-143-9 Quadrature LFO. Luckily, because my intention had not been to utilise phase at all, I had only been after sinewave-only modulation. This LFO has 4 “non-simultaneous” (phase-shifted) outputs, and this means you only have one output at the time, which is “followed” by the next one, and so on. Once I finally had 4 VCA’s, I was able to use it as a (one-directional) sequential fader. In this case, I was using the module as an LFO only. It does what it can: fading in the next VCA’s signal in while the other is fading out. I was creating the timing ofthis snoozing monster with it. However, you cannot change the degrees – you can only spend a “longer time” and a “shorter time” when you modulate the frequency by another LFO (or manually). It also applies for the Octature II, (loosely speaking) the A-143-9’s bigger brother which is capable of creating 8 sinewaves 45-degrees out of phase. What would you need if you wanted more than that?

Two sinewaves, 90 degrees out of phase – Source: www.thecarversite.com

You either need a XAOC Devices – Batumi or a WMD – PDO for that. Whereas the A-143-9 has a static, 90-degree phase-shift, the PDO’s channels 2, 3 and 4 can be “turned away” even by 360 degrees in relation to its original phase (a relative 0 degrees). Now imagine that you can “spend as much time” at each fade as you want to. You can even control it by a sequencer, another LFO, by an envelope, etc. You can even modulate it by itself for interesting timing variations. Well, why don’t you forget about VCA’s and start patching the out phase outputs to VCF’s, strike or gate inputs, or apply them in stereo, quad panning, wherever you want to… You have a special kind of sequencer here already.

Audio rate – thru zero, phase modulation and distortion

You may have heard the phrase from a lot of manufacturers and users that “thru-zero FM sounds better”. At this point, I have to explain an equivalance that shows the relationship(!) between something being “thru-zero” and its phase. If you totally invert a waveform you create a mirror image of that. This mirror image basically equals to “180 degrees out of phase”. So basically, you are changing the phase in relation to the timing of the waveform going through the positive or the negative range. You can read the following on the Doepfer website at A-110-4 Thru-Zero Oscillator‘s description:

“The term “Thru-Zero” means that even “negative” frequencies are generated. But this a bit a misleading term as negative frequencies do not really exist. “Negative” means in this connection simply that the sine/cosine waves will stop when the linear control voltage reaches 0V and continue with the opposite direction as the linear control voltage becomes negative and vice versa.”

So when a waveform is 180 degrees out of phase, you are seeing the waveform flowing to the opposite “direction”. If you are looking at a scope, with 90-degrees phase shifted sinewaves, you will see these phase shifted waveforms as if they were “after” one another.

Coming back to a practical musical context, we have two main “bonus” items on our sound pallette:

a. more waveformsb. more possible “space” and “spatial movement” between them.

Phase modulation and phase distortion are not the same, but it can be understood by looking at these figures from electricdruid.net:

The more heavily you modulate the phase of the waveform in audio rate, the more “displacement” you get (hence the name Phase Displacement oscillator). You can “tilt” the waveform in a way that it “spins round”. The PDO has all the waveshapes for creating sounds that are bell-like, resemble woodblocks, bright metallic, rich sounds and digital noise. It even has the dirt of the classic Casio CZ sounds.

The rest is up to you, your modules, and your ears listening to “thru-zero” FM and “phase modulation”. What sound do you like? What richness are you after? Phase is just fun!

In this episode of Modular Minutes, Analogue Zone took the new Expert Firmware of the XAOC Devices – Batumi and utilised it as the central nervous system of a patch.

Modular Minutes is a new series from Analogue Zone’s Budapest showroom – the series aims at the finest and latest modular goodies with patching comprehensively described both in comments and the description tab.

The XAOC Devices – Batumi is one of the tiniest yet most complex modulation source. It can very easily grow into a heart of a patch thanks to the manifold sync options and the quad mode. The new Expert Firmware which can be easily uploaded via USB when the module is powered off can further empower the Batumi as a central modulation source and can even give sequencing duties to it. A very well thought-out concept lies behind the nice and handy LED sliders of this module which will always breathe new life into any system.

The XAOC Devices – Batumi had already been one of the most feature-rich modulation source in this HP. Now a new alternative firmware has been released which allows you to have even more exciting patches with the Batumi.

Polish manufacturers have reached their fame with their Moskwa sequencer – but they did not stop here. Batumi, their quad modulation source is already a hit thanks to its unprecedented plethora of features. The module ships with the most updated factory firmware, however an alternate firmware has also been released thanks to Matthias Puech, already famed creator of the Parasite alternate firmware for Mutable Instruments modules. The features are the following:

Channel zoom-in on each modulation channel with LFO amplitude, LFO phase control, fine-tune control of the frequency and attenuation of the channel’s FM CV:

A New quad mode where output 1 becomes the sum of all frequencies and the other outputs become dual ones,

This features square wave modes instead of trapezoid turns the LFO into a sequencer

XAOC (yes, it is indeed the word “chaos” with Slavic characters) Devices was basically the first Eurorack manufacturer in Europe that had its origins from Poland, their debut was nothing more than an extraordinally affordable and smart sequencer with a well-designed front panel. The virus has caught up with a lot of users since then, and XAOC is getting stronger every year. We had an engaging conversation with Marcin and Tomek, the two men behind the company. They shared their views on the Polish music scene, the challenges of eurorack, and their effort to realise their own ideas in a complete manner.

Analogue Zone: How was the beginning for you?

Marcin: We’ve been around for about 4 years now. The idea to start the modular synth company was rather spontaneous (and probably a bit naive) – as you could expect from nothing short but unbridled enthusiasm for modulars. Ourselves, we’re wigglers in the first place – playing, trading, discussing, nerding heaps of modules, synths and what not. That gave us a lot of perspective, ideas and knowledge to tailor our own line of products. We’ve learnt a million lessons since then, many of them the hard way. It was well worth it, though.

Analogue Zone: You mentioned that you are wigglers in the first place. That’s my greatest fascination about eurorack that in some ways it is still a small market, the majority of customers being ‘wigglers’ or so to say ‘to-be-wigglers’. What do you think, how could you motivate somebody to get into eurorack instead of staring at a screen and program everything in software?)

Marcin: As for most of the people I know, the main motivation was realizing the limitless posibilities of a modular synth system, plus the immediate, physical relation with an instrument that stimulates the

Marcin and Tomek at their studio (Photo by: Albert Zawada)

creativity to a great extent. Of course a piece of software is thousand times more powerful and I actually love it as well but it does impose the certain method of work instead of stimulating your mind to find your own.

Tomek: I’m involved in electronic music since high school, it is almost 20 years now. It’s kind of a fetish but the look and feel of hardware instruments was always very inspirational for me. With hardware, it is easy to focus on one part of your setup only, and to do something solely with it. I believe you still can’t reproduce some erratic behavior – i.e. there are great emulations of tape delays or spring reverbs, but you can’t open them and mess with the tape or springs. Hardware and software are just different tools, none is better or worse. If you enjoy your software, and you like the idea of having everything in the box – why bother with hardware? But if that’s not enough, there is the really magical world of hardware at hand.

AZ: What motivated you to revisit old concepts such as a voltage controlled mixer? It does not _seem to_ come close to the strange ideas manufacturers come up with. Yet, you have been working on it so hard for long months now.

Marcin: Pretty much the same motivation as usual – we wanted to design a device we would love to buy ourselves. The VC mixer is hardly an original idea but we realized how cool it would be do

add some certain features while keeping the whole thing immediate and effective. Obviously, some functional trade-offs were unavoidable because of the cramped eurorack form factor and technological reasons. Some decisions were probably bit too ambitious and we ended up tweaking numerous protoypes one after another.

Tomek: We are aware that some wigglers await Praga impatienlty. It is also a hard lesson for us as we didn’t expect it would take us so much effort and time. But some day soon it’ll be ready and sounding great 🙂

AZ: You mentioned limited size as a factor of the eurorack format. How do you tackle this problem? Do you ever wish that eurorack had been 4U not 3U in height?

Marcin: Hate to be Captain Obvious but every single modular format has its cons and advantages. For the euro, the portability and affordability is what attracts me. But what’s more important – the popularity. Just because with so many companies and engineers involved in it, there’s an unending, prolific festival of ideas going on – from vanilla to damn creative and even esoteric crazy shit. And that’s the greatest aspect of euro! Being obsessed with interface design, I always have a hard time to retain the ergonomics within space as limited. 4U seems to be much less limiting, that’s why I am cheering on the Kilpatrick format (never liked the Serge way though).

Tomek: I would often have a dilemma on what to put in small case that I could take on the plane, so I can understand the approach of having as many useful things as possible in a small case. On the other

XAOC Devices – Batumi

hand, it is killing the playability and the ergonomics of the system. So we try to find a compromise. Batumi gives you four fully featured LFOs in just 10 HP. It is crazy small but luckily we have found the way to do it right I hope. We don’t really want to go the same way with the VCF, for example. You just need enough space to manipulate knobs like cutoff. It is not a “set and forget” type of parameter. Before designing anything, we ask ourselves: “How much space can a specific module take?” “How many knobs and jacks do we need on it?” How big will the PCB be? We are not afraid of big stuff, and there will be some relatively big XAOC modules for sure.

AZ: What has been the biggest moment so far for you as manufacturers?

Tomek: For me it was the moment when I was finally holding our first module, the Moskwa, in my hand. It was amazing, I realized it is really happening. Marcin mentioned our first Messe – it was incredible for us to talk with all those happy customers, and other manufacturers.

Marcin: To me, it was the moment that I realized that actually lots of

XAOC Devices Moskwa – their first ever module

people appreciate our approach and enjoy these modules a lot. Please allow me, hereby, to thank them for all the the feedback and support. That keeps us going. The second moment was the Messe, but that’s another story – meeting some friends and personal heroes in person.

AZ: In these meetings, how do you share ideas? You are “of the same family” but at the same time you are likely competitors as well…

Marcin: It was more like sharing the experiences, some great dudes behind the brands we respect so much gave us a lot of super valuable advice, opinions and yeah, compliments, as well as their enthusiasm was radiating upon us. For my usually low self-esteem, it did wonders and I reallize I was probably way too excited and annoying, duh! The “family” or let’s better call it “scene” feeling is still present and I hope it will last for long. Sure there’s a competition but, at least among those manufacturers we admire and respect, nobody seems to fuss about it. We were happy to help several brands with some stuff and we appreciate that others helped us as well.

Tomek: I really hate to think about eurorack manufacturers as just a bunch of competing companies. Like with music, two different albums are not the competitors of each other. The beauty of eurorack lies in linking different modules from different manufacturers with different aproaches and ideas, just to obtain your own truly unique instrument. It is amazing that we can talk with others, exchange experiences, help each other just to make everything better.

AZ: For you, price is a factor, since the moment you produce modules. What do you think of other manufacturers who are on the other edge of the market? Don’t you think there would be room for some highly priced XAOC modules?

Marcin: Price is, obviously, a significant factor, escpecially when you’re coming from an Eastern European background. Economics is just hard to ignore here so we always tried to set the pricing honestly and just right. It is not that easy though, especially since the

The PCB of XAOC’s latest Batumi module

dollar is high, we have to reconsider the pricing a bit while still keeping it reasonable. Certainly, several of the upcoming XAOC products will be somehow more expensive than the current line mainly because of the size, complexity and components/assembly costs of more refined and sophisticated designs.

Tomek: We just try to be fair. To have a very affordable offer was one of our main goals while starting the company – but that’s not easy. Low quantity manufacturing is expensive, and eurorack is still a very small market. Also, focusing on details generates higher costs – lots of knobs, bigger panels, expensive electronic components etc. As for the other manufacturers, I think that everyone can ask as much as he want because that is reward for his work. Some of those super expensive modules are a work of genius and rock solid build quality, while other ones are just expensive – but I can’t argue with that. Anyway, modular synths were never as affordable as they are now, that’s why the eurorack is booming.

AZ: How would you describe the Polish synth/electronic music scene? Do you think you have made an impact on that with XAOC or were you picking up some vibes that had already been there maybe?

Tomek: There are many interesting projects and labels within the Polish alternative/avantguarde scene – everything from harsh noise

Marcin and Tomek – XAOC Devices (photo by Albert Zawada)

to ambient or techno. Sometimes it is atomized, some folks may be a little biased but in the end there is a load of good music. We are part of it, and I’m quite happy with it. We organize some workshops and we have our blog about the modulars (modularne.info) and boutique instruments (mmkay, the blog is neglected lately due to lack of time), so at last we are trying to help everyone interested in modular synths. We are are not gurus of some kind though, and I don’t want to be one.

Marcin: The modular nerd crowd is rather small but is growing steadily, there are always new faces on our synth meets and workshops – something I am really happy to see. And yes, we were told that we had some serious impact on some of those chaps, which is heartwarming. Can’t comment on the electronic scene in general actually, as I don’t follow anything too closely anymore – and even when I did, it was mostly rather for the industrial stuff. Except for a usual, mandatory slew of experimental dudes, there’s probably loads of EDM/IDM/etc. acts around though – some really talented and inpsired musicians bought our modules and keep in touch, cheers.

AZ: Could you give us a sneak-peak of what 2016 will look like for XAOC Devices?

Marcin: I hope to finish all the new projects we started (yup, “the vaporware” first), damn it. In 2016, I would love to announnce the basic yet somehow complete XAOC system, touch wood.

Tomek: Let’s finish a half of the projects we have on our workbench, at least. Yeah, XAOC system would be rad!

It was a great pleasure to see this Polish manufacturer emerging and putting the standards higher in the eurorack scene. The brand XAOC Devices (fyi: XAOC is pronounced as ‘chaos’) fills in just about every space left in functionality and has already infected many eurorack systems. Their function-rich products are based on mostly digital innovations, plus the beautiful panel design and pricing are also pointing towards a bright future for this brand and also for us – the users.

Everything started in Moskwa

XAOC Devices – Moskwa

It is common knowledge that not a lot of (low-priced) sequencer modules are readily available on the market that can be used as a standalone and full-fetched sequencer tool. Moskwa however is not one of this kind. One can easily fall in love with it after trying out the knobs and switches that can be grabbed with ease. Together with the inspiring front panel these are only outward advantages: the real appeal is inside. The uni- and bipolar CV modes, the built-in clock generator and slew limiter can all make this module the main character in any patch. The Moskwa was released at a time what we call “the new eurorack sequencers’ age”. It has not lost its shine ever since, and it is still a really sought-after product.

XAOC Devices – Tirana

The Moskwa’s little brother called Tirana would be my ideal ‘techno sequencer’, but in practice it would be just unbeatable in any musical environment that is in need of repetitive sequential modular cycles. It Transpose- and step-repeat functions make it exceptional compared to more general eurorack sequencers. It is advised to buy more than one of it, because you can even daisy chain them! We’ve almost forgot to mention the M-O-M combo, which is also a recommended setup for users who intend to creat classic, more ‘orthodox’ sequencer controls. The Ostankino controller module can expand the Moskwa(s) functionality with voltage controlled step address, clock, gate and trigger outs, and also AB pattern controls.

Sewastopol – a more thought-out envelope follower

Sewastopol would be my latest favourite module from XAOC’s product line, due to the lively inspiration of this build that is sourced by the love of audio-based modulation signals. Many of us tend to be thinking of getting their next LFO module while forgetting that how much lively magic can be added to our music if we derive modulation and timing signals from our already existing audio signals. (The latter would be summed up as the basis of envelope following which was pioneered by Don Buchla in the 70’s: a realisation of the idea of the composer Morton Subotnik who asked Mr. Buchla to build something with which he could control the synthesizer with his own voice. )This nice module which can be utilised as an fx-send / return with soft clipping has a more stable envelope that gives a more defined contour to the decay of the envelope. Not to even mention the built-in highpass filter which makes the envelope more precise, making it rumble-free from lower frequencies. Enough of the talking for now, go and see it in action:

Batumi – a smart LFO

A XAOC Devices – Batumi phase módban

We are already in an age where extra functions are added even to basic LFO’s. Even Doepfer (the latest A-147-2 model which will replace the A-147) has upgraded its basic voltage controlled LFO, but the Erica Synths Black LFO module could also be a fine example here.

A XAOC Devices Batumi divide módban

XAOC Devices – Batumi has enormous modulation capabilities and possibilities, and the 4 voltage controlled sub-units can offer interesting sequential modulation patterns. One can find a quadrature mode(with much longer sine waves than the Doepfer A-143-9 Quadrature LFO has to offer). In this mode the output signal is basically four 90 degrees phase shifted, that is, 4 consecutive sine waves. By these waves we could morph between oscillator waveforms (by modulating a quad VCA with the oscillator’s waveforms in question piped in), we could also modulate filter outputs’ amplification for tonal coloring and fading in and out basically any kind of 4 parameters… The phase mode is a more thought-out version of the quadrature mode, and could be also really interesting, because special modulation waveforms and ‘pseudo-sequences’ can be created if the LFO’s start modulating each others phase. For the fans of more rectified and time based signals, a divide mode is also available. The firmware is going to be continously updated in future, so one might only speculate what other functions we will be able to obtain by the Batumi…

I salute you XAOC Devices, and I hope I’ll be covering more of your fascinating works in the future!